The Schrug

It was a beautiful morning in Boston and I had no appointments, so I decided to venture down to Boston Common to see first-hand what all this Tea Party fuss is about. I had visions of doing some Daily-Show-esque interviews … putting some of these folks on the spot to see how well they could defend their positions. So I hung a badge around my neck that said “PRESS” and I wandered through the crowd with my camera and microphone looking for people to interview. Here’s what I learned.

• Interviewing is hard. Whether you’re a journalist, documentarian, or plain old rabble rouser, it takes some chutzpah to walk up to strangers who are essentially minding their own business and start asking them questions. It’s a little easier to approach people holding signs or wearing costumes because they’re essentially advertising that they want to be heard. To the extent that these are the people getting quoted in the media, we may be getting an exaggerated or otherwise distorted view of the general sentiment among the crowd.
• Interviewing with a hidden agenda is even harder. These people have done you the favor of consenting to an interview, not to an argument or debate. I tried a few times to gently lead people into contradicting themselves, but I didn’t want to be nasty about it. You can hear for yourself (scroll down).
• Interviewing while running your own sound and video on equipment you’re still learning to use … fuggedaboudit. I ended up with interview subjects out of frame, audio levels too high and too low, once I actually forgot to hit record … it was a mess. So we have stills here instead of video. Sorry.
• If today’s crowd was a representative sample, Tea Party supporters are overwhelmingly middle class, middle aged, and white. I tried really hard to find minorities in the crowd. With one or maybe two exceptions, they all turned out to be press, tourists, or anti-Tea-Party protesters.
• Ask a bunch of Tea Party supporters about their beliefs and you will hear the same lines over and over again. Taxes are too high, government is too big, leaders in Washington are ignoring the Constitution, we’re losing our freedoms, we need to remember what this country is about, and so on. It is rare to hear any talk of specific changes that should be made other than undoing whatever the Obama administration has done (and a good bit of what the Bush administration did, too). This made the interviews challenging, because you can only ask the same follow-up question so many times without being a jerk.
• Tea Party supporters may have very simple views of the world, but they don’t seem to be stupid or insane. Kooks seemed to be the exception, not the rule. But events like the Tea Party do attract some kooks. (See “new world order, below.)
• These Tea Party organizers have been doing this road show for months and they still can’t get a sound system right. Sarah Palin could barely be heard by anyone more than 50 yards away from the podium. (Other presenters came through much more clearly.)

Here are the people I spoke to today. Click the photos for MP3 audio of the interview. Pardon the big changes in volume. Again … still learning the equipment.

When I got home, I recorded a few other thoughts about today’s experience.

Sorry about the “beard.” It’s for a movie I’m filming this weekend. Can’t wait to shave.